Yeah, sorry Khan, I don't think the position that Blue doesn't care about Fuchsia is completely unsupported and consequently untenable. I think a case certainly can be made that her relationship with Blue wasn't completely healthy, from its origins onward. However the fact the two were able to communicate honestly off-panel and resolve some of their differences does speak to a genuine bond they have.

It doesn't suddenly mean that Blue is a good person, though. It doesn't mean she's not a monster. At the very least, there's more than enough to make a case she is a bad person or extremely mercenary at bare minimum. But people are complicated and even evil people have loved ones they may or may not have a healthy relationship with. If this wasn't true, gangland stories and TV series like the Sopranos wouldn't nearly be as fascinating or popular.

Last edited by Midnight Tea on Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

Sigh. I'm going to assume Milton hasn't said anything out loud to Blue, also assuming what he said about female bosses was an aside to the audience, since Blue didn't react to it. I'm not going to blame Milton, as he honestly doesn't seem to know better, but ---

Guys like him are driving women out of tech companies._________________

Aye, tech companies in particular are notorious for this but it can happen anywhere.

Also, I had Bullshit Bingo with the "It's because he was unattractive" line. What do I win?

Top Tip to not be a fucking creep: Don't try it on with colleagues when you're working. You want to try and develop some sort of romantic relationship, you have to do that in a social context, not in one where your victim can't tell you to go away and leave her alone, because she has to keep working with you. It's the social equivalent of backing someone into a corner and blocking the exit before endlessly trying to bully them in to doing what you want.

Aye, tech companies in particular are notorious for this but it can happen anywhere.

Also, I had Bullshit Bingo with the "It's because he was unattractive" line. What do I win?

Top Tip to not be a fucking creep: Don't try it on with colleagues when you're working. You want to try and develop some sort of romantic relationship, you have to do that in a social context, not in one where your victim can't tell you to go away and leave her alone, because she has to keep working with you. It's the social equivalent of backing someone into a corner and blocking the exit before endlessly trying to bully them in to doing what you want.

So in an adult world where more than half your life will be spent at work, making it one of the most likely areas you will meet people, you should never try to strike up a relationship.

The only way that might remotely work is if she got soooo drunk that even the ghost of Amy Winehouse would go to her and say "Whoa girl, you seriously need to lay off the booze"._________________“I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator”- Richard Branson -
----

Aye, tech companies in particular are notorious for this but it can happen anywhere.

Also, I had Bullshit Bingo with the "It's because he was unattractive" line. What do I win?

Top Tip to not be a fucking creep: Don't try it on with colleagues when you're working. You want to try and develop some sort of romantic relationship, you have to do that in a social context, not in one where your victim can't tell you to go away and leave her alone, because she has to keep working with you. It's the social equivalent of backing someone into a corner and blocking the exit before endlessly trying to bully them in to doing what you want.

So in an adult world where more than half your life will be spent at work, making it one of the most likely areas you will meet people, you should never try to strike up a relationship.

Got it.

That's realistic.

Stop it. You're creating a strawman. There's nothing wrong with asking a co-worker if they're interested, you like who you like, after all. Lots of healthy relationships have started at work. Sometimes the other party is interested, sometimes they aren't. One of my co-workers asked me out, I told him I wasn't interested in him like that, and then that was that. No one did anything wrong in that situation.

What's shitty is when there's an obvious conflict of interest (boss/employee is the most obvious one), or if you keep trying after the other party has rejected you, or if you make things weird after they've rejected you.

If he said the "totally HOT" part out loud, then he's a creep. If he didn't, then Blue is being weird.

Wrong.

Besides saying/thinking that she was hot, what else did he say that could have been construed as being creepy? He was nervously arguing that he wanted to study the (in the company's eyes) malfunctioning piece of hardware, and she was arguing that the hardware needed to be ripped apart "limb from limb."

well there was a previous strip in which blue calls milton to ask for a status report regarding the rogue fembot situation... their dialogue indicates that they've known each other prior to this, though we had never been shown any interactions between the two until then.

This is the second coworker that Milton assumes is totally into him. Without any reason other than they exist, are women, and he's attracted to them. It is entirely possible he does this with a lot more coworkers than we've seen.
Many of us have experienced that fucking coworker. It sucks because you still have to go to work, even if that coworker is there.

When someone is creeping like that, you know, because they behave a certain way. Even if they don't say anything. It's in the way they stare at you, and how they talk. Blue deals with creepy customers all the time, so she's likely got plenty of experience in knowing who is a creep and who isn't.

Khan, when Fuschia first started going out with/hanging out with Crim, Blue yelled at him for acting like he could save Fuschia. Fuschia was doing a lot of things at the time that could have gotten her in trouble, like skipping work, in order to spend time with Crim. She had reasons to think Crim was dangerous for her friend, and reasons to think she should save Fuschia from herself._________________::crisis mode::

To be very, very clear beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt: It's not that Milton isn't "creepy" because he's a nerd who has a huge crush on his coworker(s) and/or superiors. You often can't help how you feel about people in that sense and it would be indeed be unfair to judge him on his feelings alone. It's not even wrong to want to possibly even develop a romantic relationship starting from the workplace, though it's not advisable.

However.

What makes him creepy is that he doesn't have a realistic understanding of what comprises an intimate overture. What makes him creepy is that it colors his interactions with his coworkers to the point they can obviously tell he's drooling over them. Blue's reaction in the final panel ("fucking creep") is important because the involved movements and body language is difficult to portray in this medium and we can't see where his eyes are looking at. When someone is clearly lusting after you and lacks even the most basic social skills to either temper that feeling or confess it to you in a mature way, that will make you uncomfortable with every interaction. Milton just takes it to the next level by not even being self-aware enough to know what a healthy romantic interaction even looks like.

(By the way, it's not a matter of gender. Anyone can be guilty of this. I've had female coworkers creep on me in very much the same way -- though admittedly, I had much less reason to worry that that during a company party she might get drunk and try to force herself on me.)